


On the Road

by pinkgeranium



Series: Sandor in the Riverlands [1]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-31
Updated: 2015-03-31
Packaged: 2018-03-20 12:33:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 737
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3650487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pinkgeranium/pseuds/pinkgeranium
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What was Sandor doing before the Brotherhood without banners caught up with him in Book Three of ASoIaF?</p><p>Agonizing over the decisions he made the night of the battle of the Blackwater.  Or at least that's what he was doing in my head-cannon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	On the Road

**Author's Note:**

> This is a very short fic I wrote some time ago to satisfy my own curiosity. I have been thinking about posting it for awhile so I am taking the plunge today.
> 
> All characters and setting remain the property of GRRM as usual.

He would never have thought it was possible to miss the sight of someone so much.  Being able to see her every day was a luxury he had never appreciated.  Even if she had never noticed he was watching, even if he had only glimpsed her from across the yard, or at the other end of a corridor.  He had known that she was still alive, that she could walk about, that the cut on her scalp was healing.  Now he knew nothing.  When he heard that Lord Tywin and the Tyrells had arrived to save the city, his first impulse had been to mount his horse and ride back to the Red Keep, but he had burnt his bridges there.  Joffrey and Cersei would not be forgiving.  The Imp had never been fond of him and Lord Tywin would be wroth.

 When he left, he battle had seemed lost.  There had seemed reason to believe that the city would fall and Lady Sansa would pass into the care of King Stannis.  Lord Eddard had died wanting to put Stannis on the throne – even though Sandor knew this King in the North business was like to stick in Stannis’s craw - he’d believed she’d be better off with Stannis. 

Now Sandor had to live with the knowledge that he’d abandoned her to the Lannisters.  The news that the King had broken his betrothal to the traitor’s daughter and was to wed the Tyrell girl instead had come as a greater blow.  Now Sansa didn’t even have the protection of being the King’s betrothed.  She was nothing but a hostage now.  Traitor’s daughter, traitor’s sister, with not a single friend in Kings Landing.  Her flowering put her in even greater danger.

_Why didn’t I take her with me that night?  I could have.  I could have picked her up and thrown her over my shoulder and carried her away.  She would not have fought me.  When I held my dagger to my throat she obeyed.  Why didn’t I take her with me?_

He asked himself that last question again and again but he knew why.  He didn’t take her with him that night because he’d been afraid.  Afraid of what he would do.  He’d held a dagger to her throat, pushed her down onto the bed. He’d been on top of her.  She was an innocent girl but he was a grown man he’d known what came next, and it wasn’t what he wanted. He’d never raped a woman, of all the crimes of war it was the most abhorrent to him.  His promise to himself to never force himself on a woman unwilling was the only thing he still clung to as a marker to separate the man he had become from the man his brother had always been. 

 He had gone to her room because she was all he could think about, because she was the only thing that mattered to him, because he’d finally decided to accept the role of her rescuer, a role he’d been resisting for a long time because he didn’t think himself worthy of it. But the moment he’d accepted the position, the position he felt she’d been pushing him towards ever since they met, she’d withdrawn the offer.  She’d refused to be rescued and he had proved to her why she was right to refuse.  He’d scared her, he’d held a blade to her throat for the second time, and he’d threatened her life (not the first time he’d done that either). 

Not that he’d ever had a chance...he’d known that from the beginning.  Even if Sandor Clegane the boy had become the man he’d once wanted to be, he still wouldn’t have been good enough for the little bird.  She was meant to marry a High Lord, or the eldest son of a High Lord.  Hells, she was supposed to be Queen.

Having no orders and no one to give them.  Having no-one to protect, and nothing but his own thoughts and his horse for company he wandered aimlessly about the Riverlands drinking himself to sleep, drowning his disappointment and almost hoping to run into his brother.  For if he ran into Ser Gregor now that he was free of the Lannister yoke – there was an opportunity to create a lasting and final difference between the two Clegane brothers – one would be alive and the other would be dead.


End file.
